AVALON, HELICOPTER Poem by Ken Babstock

Morning desacralized, the quack
science of fog. Moisture condensing
around airborne granules of salt, it's cloud
when we make out the silhouette

of a duck. Spit, the air
hits supersaturation and spits back. Gulls beyond
the first veil: clown's horn lashed
to the handlebars with stiff wire —

Hermit thrush on the near fencepost, beaded
meniscus in the bleached syringe.
Electroshock, duster, blot. One crow's drawn-out ablutions.
If Berkeley, as we hope, misfigured the contents, and ideas

are like other things, here, on a porcelain toadstool
sprouted from powerlines, is the sum of all past assertions
on essence. Underfoot sponge,
mystery mounds, moss ottomans, and everyone's addition

shearing away from first additions. Wild rose,
tin well cap, purple iris in the juniper tangle where a brook
bogs out from up on the cape's moonscape.
Shrew and owl. Confectioners

table of black shale where the clapboard claps out.
Tut's lost prick a wasp drips out of.

Whoever it was ransacked the ossuary built
this hitching post doohicky for the clothesline's antipodal pulley.

Scalded wrack. What's the local term?
Sippy cup in the shed
near the chainsaw and widowed oar.
Breaking the Bakelite surface out there,

a minke bends into the first, the only,
race gate — two grebes —
of his zen GS. On day one
of the home fishery, Michael, over a platter
of cod, "The real is not mental,
it's mental" as the pup tent fwaps, lifts anchor.

Evening's a tranche of kids on bog bikes,
Big 8 Cola, the dew line, Sikorski bolts,
Purity Crackers, WikiLeaks, and sea smoke.